i have played with this more and noticed that the problem seems to stem from
having packages that were deleted by hand. once this is done, you cannot go back
to rhn and tell it to 'delete' these packages ('update package list' fails as
mentioned above). the job to 'delete' the packages shows up and is pulled down
to the machine, but nothing happens. of course, this is expeetcd on the client
since the packages were already removed, but rhn central still shows them as
installed. interesting to note is that the job is marked as COMPLETE (not failed).